Friday, March 30

Highlights: LOTS, but I think “Molly Says” and "If & When" make a great double-header.Rob sez: I did a little sweetening to the tracks as received, and I think they sound quite good (if I do say so myself…)

The storied Bowery Ballroom in NYC

The Bowery Ballroom sold out for The dB's show in 2007

**CORRECTED SETLIST, THANKS TO FANTOM**

1. Black and White

2. Dynamite

3. Big Brown Eyes

4. Cycles Per Second

5. Lonely Is as Lonely Does

6. Ask for Jill

7. Molly Says

8. If and When

9. World to Cry

10. talking/tuning

11.
Living a Lie*

12.
Happenstance

13. Love
Is for Lovers

14. In Spain

15. band
intros

16.
Neverland

17.
Let's Work Together**

18.
Amplifier

19.
Nothing Is Wrong20. White Train*Track 11 begins with the intro lines to "We Should Be In Bed" **Track 17 is a Wilbert Harrison cover (introduced and sung by Will as a song composed by a North Carolinian, sung in tribute by a fellow North Carolinian). Harrison was born in Charlotte, NC, circa 1929 and died in Spencer, NC, in 1994. His best-known song is "Kansas City," which reached #1 on the Billboard charts in 1959.

Repercussion: see below to read about the connections between H-Bombs and The dB's.

Highlights: The 96-Second (sic) Blowout medley is a
particular favorite, but also check out the “freaky” distorted vocal effects on
“Bomb Scare” (how many young, impressionable minds were blown by this one
performance alone?!?)

batchain says: Guessing this is from a 2nd or 3rd generation
cassette. The band did record some of their shows to reel-to-reel. The sound
though is remarkably good.

ROB SEZ: Those who know the 3-song H-Bombs EP get to hear live
versions of them all here. I recommend you bring your sense of humor to this
listening experience…

After the demise
of The Sneakers, members Mitch Easter, Robert Keely and Chris Chamis formed a
short-lived band with Peter Holsapple called H-Bombs in the fall of 1977.
The few shows they did are the stuff of local legend in Chapel Hill & Durham,
N.C. Other than one 7-inch EP released on Car Records, there would be no other
H-Bombs releases — despite fanciful discussions of a double-grooved
10-inch album.

Writing for the
essential “NC Music History Dot Com” blog, music journalist Fred Mills has this
summary of the H-Bombs’ brief musical “career”:

“Chapel Hill’s H-Bombs may have only enjoyed
a brief existence — roughly, from the start of UNC’s fall semester in 1977 to
the end of the spring semester in ’78 — but the handful of highly memorable
gigs they performed, and their helping to jumpstart the Triangle punk/new wave
scene, meant that they left behind an influential and relatively sharp-looking
corpse. Not only did the quartet inspire numerous other musically-minded
individuals (including yours truly, who didn’t pick up a guitar but did embark
upon a career as a rock writer that, for better or for worse, is still going
strong), in the wake of the band’s demise several of the cadaver’s vital organs
were ripe for harvesting: Guitarist/vocalist Peter Holsapple would move to New
York and join Chris Stamey’s dB’s, bassist Robert Keely and drummer Chris
Chamis would form the much-loved Triangle combo Secret Service, and
guitarist/vocalist Mitch Easter would eventually go on to Let’s Active fame.”

Sam Hicks, in an online article called “How North Carolina
Got Its Punk Attitude,” gives some background info on the H-Bombs. Hicks
describes them as a “neo-punk group”:

“Peter, Mitch Easter, Robert Keely and Chris Chamis played at street
festivals, around campus, The Mad Hatter (previously The Town Hall) or
Cambridge Inn on the Duke campus. At the first H-Bombs show, Peter and Robert
handed out 2-4 page ‘flyers’ called Biohazard
Informae, which began a long history of 'zines & music working
together toward a common goal.

“Although this band really can't be considered 100% punk, they were
pretty strange, and would later play with punk bands who said they could drive
a crowd away with the best of them. In mid 1978, with college over [Holsapple
dropped out after year 3] and nothing in Chapel Hill but ‘the same 40 people to
play to’, the band dissolved.

“The ‘Death Garage / Big Black Truck / 96-Second Blowout’ single (CRR-5)
was recorded at Mega Sound Studio in Bailey, NC [with initial recordings taking
place in NYC]. The single featuring three H-Bombs songs was released in 1978 on
Car Records after the band had already broken up. Peter & Mitch are
actually the only people on the record, but since these were songs Peter had written
& performed with the group, the cover says, ‘Peter Holsapple of The
H-Bombs.’ ”

“The H-Bombs, which was me, Mitch, Robert Keely from Sneakers on bass
and Chris Chamis on drums, existed for about a year or so from 1977 to 1978.
There were a handful of gigs in the Chapel Hill area, many of which got taped
apparently. There’s even a film made by Richard Kern (now a big name in NY
underground filmmaking) of us at Duke University, performing with our friend
Jonathan Sharpe seated in an easy chair, reading the paper through the whole
set.

“Most of the stuff we did was either written by Mitch or myself, with
Robert’s ‘Twilight’ being an exception and a brace of irritating covers (like
‘Komm Gibb Mir Deine Hand’ and ‘I Fought the Law’). Our first gig was at a
Chapel Hill street fair, preceding the Apple Chill Cloggers (!) We had more
posters than gigs. I would bet that Robert still has all of them somewhere,
tucked away in his archives. Biohazard
Informae, our little fanzine, was also a product of that time.

“I think it was a good band, but who knows? I was never in the audience
for it. By the way, Chris Chamis, who served nobly as a dB's sound man for a
spell, and I saw each other for the first time in years at Ziggy’s in
Winston-Salem a month or so ago. Chris plays drums for an excellent
Beatles/60’s band called Backbeat. If you get the chance to see them, do so.

“ ‘Money From England’ was about alleged cash that was supposed to
arrive to help Ork Records in NY put out an H-Bombs recording. Suffice to say,
it never arrived. I recently came into a live CD of the H-Bombs that is almost
listenable! We sure had a lot of material!”

At the risk of
turning a musical footnote into a PhD thesis, here’s a few lines from Peter and
Mitch about the band in a 2007 feature story about Mitch by Fred Mills in Magnet magazine:

After Sneakers, Stamey headed to New York and started The dB’s, while
Easter and Holsapple teamed up to form the H-Bombs back in Chapel Hill.
Debuting at a street fair in the fall of 1977, their timing was perfect: Punk
was in the air, and the H-Bombs’ marriage of pop and garage proved hugely
influential locally.

“The H-Bombs was a short-lived group, but it served a great purpose,”
says Holsapple. “New wave was just hitting the area, and we seemed to fit right
in the niche.”

“I was a little too old to totally buy into the punk scene,” says
Easter. “I was still listening to what Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne were doing. But
I was pleased that we got something going on.”If I get up a real head of steam, I might re-type Will's alleged review of a (mythical) H-Bombs album. The review was published in 1978 in The Daily Tarheel, the campus newspaper of UNC-Chapel Hill. I call it "alleged" not only because the album did not exist, but because the article was actually a reprint of a review Will wrote for TDH (using his nom de plume) of The Sneakers' (actual) album. In the review, Will turns flowery music crit phraseology into a low-brow art form...

Friday, March 23

audience recording (sound quality VG) - see upgrade HEREBIG THANKS to the taper and ALL PRAISE to fantom for the share!

Like this one? G-R-E-A-T shot of the guys. I'm guessing 1981 or '82.

I am very enthused about receiving and sharing this amazing show. It's the blog's first musical contribution since launching, from fantom, veteran blogger and big-time dB's fan (his comments about the show are below). Fantastic performance, and the sound quality is just right for a show like this (there's persistent, but not annoying, chatter).No less than Peter Buck of R.E.M. helps set the scene in describing the venue(from an interview with David Fricke in 1990, taken from R.E.M. - The Rolling Stone Files, p. 114):

“There was a place in Greensboro, North Carolina, called Friday’s. It was a pizza parlor, and the guy had bands play. It was an L-shaped room; you could see through the bar to the ovens, with the guy with the long stick with pizzas on it, and see us, too. He’d charge a dollar, we’d get 150 people in there, and we’d get the door. People would let us sleep on the floor. There were clubs like that in every city.”

Outside Friday's, long ago, on a busy nightRusty Moore / LoudFastPhoto(check out more excellent photos by Rusty Moore here)

A groovy flyer from Friday's

fantom says:"This is the dB's on their first real national tour ("a bare-bones affair, with band, equipment, and road manager Jim Ford all packed into one non-stretch van" that "went as far west as Kansas City" http://thedbs.com/bio/bio5.html), swinging through their home state. The crowd's psyched, the band is excited. Check out particularly the interplay on 'The Fight'. Pal Mitch Easter makes a special appearance on 'Louie Louie' when it still sounds kinda fresh.

"This set has a lot of overlap with the show recorded a few days later at the Cat's Cradle (http://dbs-repercussion.blogspot.com/2012/03/cats-cradle-carrboro-nc-1981.html), dipping into both material that the members recorded solo or in pre-dB's combos and in one case, what they would release after leaving the band - as well as choice covers. I believe my source recorded the concert himself and despite a bit of chatter between tracks, it shines through well.

"This leg of the tour was also captured the previous night on video http://www.returntocomboland.com/dbs.htm. It seems pretty clear from the set's length and encores that the dB's must have been the headliner at Friday's, but a number of R.E.M. gig databases list the dB's as opening for R.E.M. at the club that night. Granted R.E.M. had released their debut single of 'Radio Free Europe' to acclaim a few months earlier, but the dB's had released their first full length at the start of the year and just returned from a long summer recording session for their second in London and were playing to the home crowd."

Sunday, March 18

Chris & Peter belt it out in B.D. Riley's at The dB's showcase on March 16.John Anderson photo / The Austin Chronicle

Sounds like a good time was had by all at South By Southwest, including Chris, Will & Peter (Gene couldn't make it, and Mitch Easter filled in for him on bass). Brett Harris filled out the sound with keyboards and additional guitar.

May 9: Under the heading "better late than never," YouTuber garrde has just posted a video of "The Adventures of Albatross and Doggerel" from the March 16 afternoon show at The Gingerman Pub. Watch it here.

March 29: Just found one more review of The dB's March 16 showcase at B.D. Riley's in the Nashville Scene. The generally sympathetic writer, Mark Gold, was surprisingly whiney about the group playing so many new songs (which I'm pretty sure is what most artists do when they're about to release a new album...). Maybe he was one of the people who kept yelling "Amplifier," which the guys didn't play. In any event, the editors had the good taste to run this nice photo of Peter about to eat the mic, taken by Eric England:

March 22: Wow -- didn't expect to see a professionally-shot video of The dB's at SXSW, but here it is: 5 songs from their March 17 performanceat Threadgill's in Austin. (Not just St. Paddy's Day, but also Will's birthday...) Don't know how long this one's going to be available, so I recommend watching it soon ... like now ... I mean, you need to hit that link immediately. BIG THANKS to Music Fog for posting it and to Peter for pointing us to it.March 20: Chris M. Junior of Goldmine magazine posted the photo of The dB's setlist (below, on left) from their March 16 showcase. [MJ, who was on the scene and shot the six videos referenced below, says "If and When" is the only 1 of the 4 encores on the setlist to actually get played. Presumably, the guys were up against the festival's time constraints...] Junior offers some tidbits about the show that others did not in his SxSW wrap-up, here. The setlist on the right is courtesy of Blurt magazine, which hosted The dB's Friday afternoon at The Ginger Man pub. See more of Blurt's coverage here.

Setlist for 3/16 afternoon show

Setlist for 3/16 evening show (showcase)

March 18: Writing for Grammy.com, Chris Thompson had a glowing reviewof
Chris' solo set the evening of March 17 with members of the Tosca String
Quartet. Chris' many projects led one blogger to quip that, at least at SxSW, Chris had to be the "hardest working man in show business"...

Thompson reveals something I didn't know: Chris has a forthcoming album called Lovesick Blues! Poking around, I found these two rough mixes from the album that Chris quietly posted a few days ago: "You and Me and XTC" and "If Memory Serves" (later, they were removed from SoundCloud). Those posts indicated the album is being produced by Jeff Crawford.Neither one sounds rough to me...March 18: Here are three great reviews
of The dB's March 16 showcase at B.D. Riley's: the first is by Jim Caligiuri of the Austin Chronicle (who wrote the preview story linked at the 3-14 update below), a second by Parry Gettelman posted
on Austin360, and a third enthusiastic report by Jim DeRogatis, a Chicago music journalist who's written about The dB's in the past. Teenage Kicks was there and also seemed very impressed.

Here's Jim DeRogatis' photo:

Got videos?The blog Musical Justice posted these six videos
from the March 16 show. Two are from the new album, including
"Kaleidoscope," a title not previously known. YouTuber cstoltze posted "Tomorrow Never Knows" from the same set.

March 16:Thomas Conner of the Chicago Sun-Times offered this description
of The dB's March 14 show in his South By Southwest blog for the
newspaper. In the same post, he also talks about Chris in his role as
musical director of Big Star's Third live performance at SxSW and reviews the performance. (Bob Mehr of the Memphis Commercial Appeal also has a review of the Big Star's Third performance at SxSW with quotes from Chris.) There are 4 photos from The dB's Wed. show here at Austin360 (see photos 86, 88, 89 & 90).

March 15: This story by Gary Graffsays
that in its first South By Southwest appearance on March 14, The dB's played new
songs "That Time Is Gone," "Before We Were Born" and "I Didn't Mean to
Say That" (the latter had not been mentioned in any previous reports
about the new album). (Love to read these upbeat reviews by guys like Graff who obviously get what The dB's are about...) YouTuber Leemoid posted "Neverland" from this performance.

The dB's (minus Gene, plus Mitch) play The Dogwood on March 14.Dana Plonka photo / Riverfront Times

March 14: The Austin Chronicle
had a South By Southwest preview story about the band, with a few
quotes from Chris & Peter about the new album. Also breaks this
piece of news: Gene will be replaced by Mitch Easter on bass for the
SxSW shows since Gene can't re-arrange his schedule.

Friday, March 16

DAMN.I'm really hating the thought of those folks who were frolicking down in Austin at SxSW Fest recently --without me!-- and hearing the first of The dB's reunion shows since RSD 2011 in Atlanta (OK, the ones in Austin were minus Gene& plus Mitch, but you get the idea...). Anyway, I was thinking about how to console myself and remembered that I had this show. It features Chris, who was musical director, and Mitch plus Eric Peterson, who played guitar with The dB's during some of their live tours in the 1980s.

Uploader's notes:
A special thanks goes to Doug Edmunds and Alex Maiolo for arranging this show.
All of the show proceeds went to Future of Music Coalition, an advocacy group
for musicians and their healthcare needs. Please see
http://www.futureofmusic.org/ if you feel inclined to contribute. I've tried to
identify most of the people playing but I know I missed a few of them.
Generally the performers are noted above the songs they are playing. Also there
has been a fair amount of editing to remove extended empty periods between
performers.

Rob says: This tribute show is clearly a labor of love; but musically, it's a rather mixed
bag. But all the performances
are enjoyable, and some are true gems (eg, Chris’ performance
of “I Am the Cosmos” on Disc 3.) Perfect sound quality from a soundboard master
tape.

Preview article for the show, with comments from some performers, is here
at IndyWeek.Com

Chris playing at a Big Star's Third live performance, NYC 2011Ted Barron photo

Rob Sez: One of the earlier shows in the tour promoting Like This.
So early, in fact, that Peter says the album is not out yet, and due to
be released “next month”. The band sounds well rehearsed and glad to be
playing again in public after a long absence. (Fair warning: the vocals sound a tad distant and there’s a dropout a coupla secs. long at the beginning of “New Gun”.)

Friday, March 9

Special highlight: The Valleydale Meats jingle. If you like that one, you'll enjoy the live version of that B&G Pies ad in an upcoming post...

Chapel Hill? Carrboro? Folks who actually live there don't know where one ends & the other begins...

Cat's Cradle interior (Ryan Russell photo)

ROB SEZ: One
of the rarer early shows available to enjoy — and enjoy is the word,
since this is a nice-sounding recording with terrific performances,
several covers, and a generous selection of songs from Repercussion — some of which are not available on other live recordings.

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